Transnational Whiteness Matters (eBook)

This collection of essays presents one of the first acts of documenting shifts in the cultural production of whiteness within texts across the twentieth century, following shifts from the proud colonial moment through to the moment of liberal multiculturalism to the recent war on terror. Each essay addresses the ways in which texts produced in these moments depend on rhetorical strategies that implicitly or explicitly privilege whiteness.

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The collection contributes to transnational whiteness debates through theoretically informed readings of historical and contemporary texts by established and emerging scholars in the field of critical whiteness studies. From a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, the book traces continuity and change in the cultural production of white virtue within texts, from the proud colonial moment through to neoliberalism and the global war on terror in the twenty-first century. Read together, these chapters convey a complex understanding of how transnational whiteness travels and manifests itself within different political and cultural contexts. Some chapters address political, legal and constitutional aspects of whiteness while others explore media representations and popular cultural texts and practices. The book also contains valuable historical studies documenting how whiteness is insinuated within the texts produced, circulated and reproduced in specific cultural and national locations.